Why have Integrated Strategies between various functional groups of a company? The “Stampedes” figure says it all. So given the need, Integrated strategies and road-maps are often appropriately found in CTO’s written objectives. As a quick overview of how integrated strategies are derived the following overview of the process is provided.

The first step is that strategies are derived from a company’s progress along its business and technology maturity curves. This is shown in the “Corporate Actions to Take Along the Business or Technology Maturity Curve” figure.

This is the standard textbook maturity curve which shows business sales or technology utilization is a function of time cues that early on as low adoption and low sales which requires product innovation and as the market develops and grows require more process innovation and investment. Only the peak is reached to which they technology busy become cash cows in new areas of opportunity must be found to sustain the company’s performance. Key as well as appropriately harvesting technologies and business models of use while selling or discarding the rest.

The next step is to combine a company’s market share along with the market growth rates to set the technology and intellectual property strategies. This is shown in the “Market Share and Growth Are Used To Set Strategy” figure.

In this example the four divisional strategies of a Corporation are all growing around the 10% rate yet because of their market share versus largest competitor have very different business and technical strategies.

The next step towards building and integrated strategies to combine the product line needs and typical market share strategy against the business maturity curve pinned up with very specific new business development and technology project selection criteria. This is shown in the “Deriving Product Line Needs” figure.

Getting closer now to the elements needed to complete an integrated set of strategies we now include the business drivers that set specific strategic and road-map objectives. This is shown in the “Business Drivers And Maturity Curves Set Strategic Objectives” figure.

Here the consumer complement or drivers are matched to the product drivers are attributes that the technical group will need to take into account is this is done the maturity curves based on log-log plots are set to predict elements such as weight sizing cost targets for new projects. These forecasting tools do a good job of making sure that the technology objectives a robust enough to assure an advantaged position upon market entry.

All of these individual strategies, analysis documents, and road-maps are then checked for internal consistency. This is shown in the “Interwoven Strategies and Road-maps” figure. It’s at this point a timing is brought into a strategic thought process so that market entry of new products hits the targeted first mover or fast follower business requirement. Winking these documents ties the market and product developments together.

To be sure that a company obtains the maximum returns on its investments it must maintain a dynamic integration and alignment of R&D, licensing, and business needs. This means it must (1) use a combination of secured intellectual assets being licensed out to the industry (preferably as a standard) on the base business, (2) utilizing rights secured and restricted to its own organization for next generation business, and (3) for embryonic businesses making sure that the latest innovation is fully secured as trade secrets or patents (with no leakage allowed). These elements can be shown in the “IP Influences Both Plans and Goals” figure.

The result of all these efforts is an integrated strategic plan. A block diagram view is shown in the “Integrated Road-maps” figure. What is important is that the deliverables should include an advantage position that can be sustained over time.